Chapter 4 Exercises: The Myth Graveyard
These exercises aren't about memorizing the myths — they're about genuinely changing how you think and behave. Some of them involve doing an experiment on yourself. That's intentional. Reading about evidence is one thing; experiencing it firsthand is something else entirely.
Exercise 4.1: The Learning Styles Self-Test (Then Meet the Evidence)
Time required: 30–45 minutes total Materials: Paper, pen, access to the internet
Part A: The Assessment (15 minutes)
Step 1: Take a free online VARK questionnaire. (Search "VARK questionnaire" — the official one is at vark-learn.com.) Answer honestly. Record your result: what is your supposed dominant learning style?
Step 2: Before reading further, answer these questions in writing: - What do you think your dominant learning style is? Did the questionnaire confirm or surprise you? - Can you recall a specific time when you learned something particularly well? What mode of instruction was used? - Can you recall a specific time when you struggled to learn something? What was the instruction mode? - Do you believe that if your instruction had been matched to your learning style in your worst learning experience, you would have done better?
Step 3: Now look back at your study habits over the past month. How much of your study time did you spend in your "dominant style"? How much in other modes?
Part B: The Evidence Test (15 minutes)
Now you're going to look at the research methodology required to confirm the learning styles hypothesis — and check whether that evidence exists.
To confirm that learning styles affect learning outcomes, you'd need a study that: 1. Classifies students by learning style 2. Randomly assigns them to matched or mismatched instruction 3. Measures learning outcomes (not enjoyment, not engagement — actual retention and performance) 4. Finds a crossover interaction: visual learners do better with visual instruction AND auditory learners do better with auditory instruction
Search for: "Pashler learning styles 2008" and read the abstract and conclusions of that paper. Then search for: "learning styles meshing hypothesis" and look at whether any rigorous studies of this type have confirmed the hypothesis.
Part C: Reflection (10 minutes)
Write answers to these questions: - Was the evidence you found of the type required to confirm the hypothesis? - How did identifying yourself with a learning style affect your study choices? Be specific. - What would you study differently if you completely abandoned the learning styles framework? - What's your emotional reaction to this finding? Notice if there's resistance, and explore why.
What to look for: Most people feel some defensiveness here. "But I really AM a visual learner — I know I am." Pay attention to that feeling. It's the distinction between preference and performance, which is the core of what makes this myth so sticky.
Exercise 4.2: The Multitasking Performance Test
Time required: 60 minutes across two sessions Materials: A timer, something to study, and something to track errors
This is an experiment you run on yourself. You're going to test your own multitasking claims.
Session A: Multitasking Condition (30 minutes)
Choose a chapter or article you need to study — something you haven't read yet. Set up your normal environment: if you normally study with your phone nearby, phone nearby. If you normally have a TV on, TV on. If you normally have music with lyrics playing, same.
Study for 30 minutes under normal conditions. Allow yourself to check your phone when the urge arises, as you normally would. Don't artificially suppress anything — you're trying to measure what you actually do, not perform a "studying correctly" demonstration.
After 30 minutes, without looking at the material, write down everything you can remember from what you studied. Give yourself 5 minutes. Then give yourself a score: count the distinct, accurate points you recalled.
Also record: how many times did you check your phone or switch to a different window or otherwise interrupt your studying? Be honest. Tally marks work.
Session B: Single-Tasking Condition (30 minutes)
Wait at least one day. Choose an equivalent piece of material — similar length, similar difficulty, from the same subject if possible.
This time: phone in a different room. Browser notifications off. Music off or instrumental only. Commit to 30 minutes of pure focus.
After 30 minutes, same procedure: write down everything you remember. Count the distinct, accurate points.
Analysis
Compare: - Recall score in Session A vs. Session B - Number of interruptions in Session A - Your subjective sense of how well you were learning in each session (this is important — note whether the sessions felt equally productive even if they weren't)
What to look for: Most people find a noticeable difference in recall. The more revealing finding is often the gap between subjective sense of productivity and actual recall — people often feel like they're doing fine while multitasking, then discover they retained much less.
If your sessions came out equal, consider: were your materials actually equivalent in difficulty? Was Session B sabotaged by fatigue or was Session A boosted by being more interesting material? Run it again with better controls.
Reflection questions: - What was the performance gap, if any? - Were you surprised by how often you switched tasks in Session A? - What would the cumulative effect be over a semester of studying under each condition?
Exercise 4.3: Research Paper Assessment — Evaluating a Learning Styles Study
Time required: 45–60 minutes Materials: Access to Google Scholar or a library database
This exercise builds critical thinking about research methodology — a skill you'll use throughout this book and throughout your learning life.
Step 1: Find a Study
Search Google Scholar for "learning styles" + "academic performance." Look for a study that claims to show learning styles affect outcomes. You'll find them — there are thousands published. Choose one that looks like it supports the learning styles hypothesis.
Step 2: Read Methodologically
You're not reading to understand the content — you're reading to evaluate the methodology. Ask these specific questions:
a) What was the design? - Was this a survey asking students about their learning style preferences? (This can't confirm that matching style to instruction improves learning — it only measures preferences.) - Was this a correlational study? (This can show that students who prefer visual instruction also do better in visual-heavy courses, but it can't rule out the explanation that those courses were simply better designed.) - Was this an experiment with random assignment? (This is what you need.)
b) Was there a crossover interaction? - Did the study show that visual learners AND auditory learners both did better when instruction matched their style? - Or did it show something else — like that everyone did better with visual instruction, or that student ratings of instruction quality were higher when style was matched?
c) What was the outcome measure? - Was it learning (retention, performance on tests of the material)? - Or was it satisfaction, engagement, self-reported understanding? (These aren't the same.)
d) How was "learning style" determined? - Self-report questionnaire? Behavioral observation? Different assessments produce different classifications, and the same person often classifies differently on different occasions.
Step 3: Write Your Assessment
Write a half-page evaluation of the study you found. Does it provide the kind of evidence that would actually confirm the meshing hypothesis? What would a skeptic say about its methodology? What would need to be true for this study to be convincing?
What to look for: Almost every study you find will fail one or more of the methodological tests above. That's the point. It's not that researchers are bad scientists — it's that confirming the meshing hypothesis is harder than it looks, and the studies that purport to confirm it are usually showing something different (and more modest) than the headline claims.
Exercise 4.4: Myth Autopsy — Tracing a Myth's Origin and Spread
Time required: 45–60 minutes Materials: Access to the internet, a search engine
Choose one myth from this chapter — not the one you found most personally resonant, but one you find genuinely interesting. You're going to trace it backward to its origins and forward through its spread.
Part A: The Origins
Research the specific origin of your chosen myth. For learning styles, this means Neil Fleming and the VARK model. For speed reading, Evelyn Wood. For left-brain/right-brain, Roger Sperry's actual research. For the 10,000-hour rule, Anders Ericsson's original Berlin violinist study.
Find and read (or read summaries of) the primary source. Then answer: - What did the original researcher actually find? - What claims did they make (if any) about practical implications? - Where in the translation from research to popular understanding did the distortion occur?
Part B: The Spread
Now trace the myth forward. How did it move from its origin to mainstream acceptance?
- Were there specific books or media figures who popularized it?
- Were there commercial interests that promoted it?
- Were there institutional interests (like teacher training programs or testing companies) that embedded it?
- What emotional or social needs does the myth serve? Why did people want it to be true?
Part C: The Correction
Now find the primary correction. For learning styles, that's Pashler et al. (2008). For the 10,000-hour rule, that's Ericsson and Pool's Peak. For left-brain/right-brain, that's Nielsen et al. (2013).
When was the correction published? Did it receive the same popular attention as the original myth? If not, why do you think that is?
Part D: The Write-Up
Write a one-page myth autopsy: origin, distortion mechanism, spread, commercial/institutional factors, correction, and why the correction hasn't fully displaced the myth.
What to look for: You'll likely find that myths spread much faster and wider than corrections, that commercial interests often stand behind the myth and not the correction, and that the myth typically offers something emotionally satisfying that the correction doesn't.
Reflection Prompt: If You Could Unlearn One Myth
Before moving to Chapter 5, spend five minutes on this.
Which myth in this chapter, if you had genuinely believed it and now genuinely don't, would have the most impact on how you approach learning? Not which one surprised you most, not which one is most well-known — which one has most shaped your specific behavior in a way you want to change?
Write one paragraph about what you'd do differently. Be concrete. "I would stop trying to match my studying to my visual learning style and instead always combine written notes with diagrams for all subjects" is concrete. "I would approach learning differently" is not.
This paragraph is a commitment device. Keep it somewhere you'll see it.